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All-Out Attack: A unique dynasty build attempt Topic

I can't disagree with that. On most of my teams that have these higher shooting, lower oa forwards, they generally do disappear in games against better competition. The hope here is to find some "mispositioned" forwards who have good defensive ratings to go with *hopefully* good offensive ones.

Season ended today and I finished in 6th in the league after finishing the season by winning 14 out of 16. Finished with 1 point fewer than the 5th place team (a 3rd year human team) and ended with 137 goals for (third in the league) and 94 against (7th from last). Hopefully I can find some solid enough defensive forwards to fix that problem, but that may be a recurring theme.

So, the projected lineup:
GK:
27/66 (Signed in free agency)
21/53 (Holdover from last year. Didn't develop as well as I'd hoped, he'll be gone at the end of the season.)

D:
34/66 (My leading goalscorer from last year drops back into the defensive third due to his D splits of 87/75/87/64/88. Don't expect him to score 40 times again this season.)
33/64 (M) (57 out of my team's 137 goals from last year move into the defensive part of the field. D splits: 91/46/72/70/91.
30/66 (Signed in FA, see above FA recap for splits)
32/63 (Same)
Bench:
28/52
32/57

M (All above):
25/61
27/60
32/55
Bench:
26/54
20/47 (This could likely change. I'm working on bringing in a 27/51 oa F to bring someone a bit more well suited to step in and play right away. We'll see what happens.)

F:
28/63 (above)
33/63 (23 goals for us last season. He moves to CF.)
26/61 (This is the 25/58 player I brought in last year. He ended up with 23 goals on 68 shots.)

Bench:
28/56 (17 goals last season at midfield)
24/53 (was 49 oa at start of last season. Projects to at least be a decent role player.

So, we're still not even close to contention, but I don't think a top 3 finish this season is unrealistic (lofty, but not unrealistic with only 3 other human owners in the league, one of which is shutting it down this season. I'm guessing we get 4th, but 3rd or maybe even second [if we're really lucky] isn't impossible.)

Signed the guy I was talking about. He's actually 29, not 27. He's not great (Highlights: 74 shooting, 75 heading and 70 FKO) but he's better than the 20 year old I had there previously, so he'll be plugged in as the #5 M.

Well, I bit the bullet. After another second-place finish, and with the #3 and #4 teams getting stronger every season, I sold off one of my highest priced defenders. With the surplus I've signed a replacement defender, veteran mid and upgraded strongly with the top available free agent F. His shooting is 85, and my other two starting forwards go 90 and 86. This version of the team is probably only a one-season thing, I got in a bidding war for the F and will have to shed salary or maybe even start all over next season.

Yeahhh... not too happy about it, I ended up having to pay over 2 million for him. I've never paid that much for a player before, I don't really believe it's long-term sustainable to have a balanced team with a 2 million player on it. He's 73 OA, the next best F available was a big step down IMO. It's a move born of frustration, and after 36 seasons, I figured I could try it for once.

World 63 does not seem particularly cognizant of a high shooting theory, it's more about the top end of talent being locked up long term. It used to be a very full and competitive world in regard to player talent, but as more owners leave the game, the top end players get locked up for lower dollars than they used to. The free agent market becomes a hit or miss thing, some seasons you might see the type of player I picked up go for under one million. I was unlucky to get into a bidding war.

Sorry if I hijacked your thread a little, wasn't trying to do that. I actually have high shooting throughout my team now, every one of my Fs and Ms has a rating over 67. Five of them over 80, including all the Fs. Last season we were second in the league in goals scored, but still 50 goals behind the top team.

So, um, it's kind of like I spent 2 million for a guy who's intended to make his difference in basically six games out of 38.

Oh, no worries. Always good to hear others' ideas and opinions. I wish some of my worlds were like that. In one world I'm in in particular there are always mid to low 60s oa guys (usually mids) going for at or around $1M. Is your guy high elsewhere in his ratings? Particularly FKO or Heading? That could work to your advantage a bit. I know I've made mistakes like that in which I got tunnel vision and wanted a player so bad that I payed way too much for him.

The new guy has what my other guys don't. 90+ speed and instinct, 85+ corner and free kicks. My other starters have high passing and shooting. I'm hoping that with the new guy in the front of a 4-3-3 he'll give us the finisher we didn't have last season.

He's only good at heading, but I've sort of found that players don't have to be great at it, not as much as shooting.

90+ Speed, huh? I don't see a ton of players with speed in the 70+ range, so 90+ is insane. What are your thoughts on speed? At one point I had a forward who only had a 58 shooting rating, but had about 3 seasons with 20+ goals. I think that his FKO rating (95) had a lot to do with that, but I did wonder from looking at the PBPs if speed wasn't somewhat of a factor at least in getting shots off.

I don't think speed is critical - once had a very effective forward with 18 speed - but like heading, it's real nice to have as much of it as you can.

To reiterate the original point - all the ratings are nice. You can get away with not having one or three strong ones. But if a forward doesn't have good Shooting accuracy, you run the risk of those 8 shots but only 2 on goal games, which I just feel are too many wasted chances.

Miss too many shots and you run the risk of doing things like losing to AI teams. Ugh.

Because I've played in a world/country which was once full, but has slowly become mostly AI due to owners leaving, I've been able to watch how the sim fills up AIs. As you know, they don't sign players till rollover of Day 11.

- First thing to note is that if there are still some clearly star level talent players who are unsigned, the AIs will leave them alone for real teams to pick up later. Not sure what the threshold is.

- AIs don't distribute talent evenly. If you check out the best AI team in your world, you should note that it signed mostly veteran players. There seems to be some sort of algorithm which makes some AI teams more competitive with real ones, while others are purely to develop younger talent.

- Since most of these players are players I've scouted in the past but didn't sign because they didn't measure up to what I wanted, I can kind of figure out what the talent level of AI teams looks like. Based on that best guess, I try to sign my backup players to be at least as good as what I think the AI level is. My goal is that if necessary I can rest my star players during games against AI teams, while still fielding backups who should be able to win against them. But that is where the danger of too many missed SOGs comes into play.

I nice discussion. To be honest I won't pass on high shooting forward, even if the guy had 55 OA. To break the 200 Goal per season you need some quality, but also think that difference between 80+ and 100 shooter is not so big. Also as we know most of the goals are scored from Free kicks or after Corner kicks.
About playing off position we had a long discussion years ago with damag and two more guys. My theory is that is affecting % of the technique ratings.
Also the game have hidden attributes and during playing this game with 4 teams for 35 seasons i found a few strikers with no impressive stats, but amazing performance.

Posted by damag on 4/14/2014 4:48:00 PM (view original):Because I've played in a world/country which was once full, but has slowly become mostly AI due to owners leaving, I've been able to watch how the sim fills up AIs. As you know, they don't sign players till rollover of Day 11.

- First thing to note is that if there are still some clearly star level talent players who are unsigned, the AIs will leave them alone for real teams to pick up later. Not sure what the threshold is.

- AIs don't distribute talent evenly. If you check out the best AI team in your world, you should note that it signed mostly veteran players. There seems to be some sort of algorithm which makes some AI teams more competitive with real ones, while others are purely to develop younger talent.

- Since most of these players are players I've scouted in the past but didn't sign because they didn't measure up to what I wanted, I can kind of figure out what the talent level of AI teams looks like. Based on that best guess, I try to sign my backup players to be at least as good as what I think the AI level is. My goal is that if necessary I can rest my star players during games against AI teams, while still fielding backups who should be able to win against them. But that is where the danger of too many missed SOGs comes into play.

I've noticed the uneven distribution of talent. I'm in one league in which there are only three human teams and the world is pretty thin, so there are regularly low-60s guys who end up on sim teams. Now the one thought I have is on the first note: The stars that are "passed over" are the ones who were on teams who were either under the roster limit or over budget. This leads me to believe that AI teams signing players happens "first" and then players are released from those teams (obviously it does happen at the same time, but that's just the order I think it handles these tasks). However, I have seen guys like the 64 oa mid I picked up at the beginning of this season who hasn't been on a team since 5 seasons ago when he was a 63 oa. No human teams wanted him and all the AI teams picked right over them, so my guess is that the threshold is in the 61-62 range.